The present invention generally relates to remote control apparatus and methods of using the same. More particularly, the present invention relates to reconfigurable remote control apparatus which can emulate any one of a plurality of transmitters for consumer products such as televisions, video cassette recorders and the like.
Many consumer electronic products such as televisions, video cassette recorders, video disc players, etc. are equipped with hand held infrared remote control transmitters. Each consumer product typically requires its own remote control transmitter due to the fact that the hardware of the electronic product is arranged to accept particular frequencies and codes only. Thus, while the convenience of remote control is well appreciated, confusion often results due to the proliferation of such remote control units. It is therefore desirable to provide a single remote control transmitter for controlling each of several electronic products.
Early solutions to the problem included systems which had central receivers, transmission lines, and controllers which were responsive to assigned addresses or which converted signals as required. Examples of such systems may be seen with reference to Litz et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,374,082 , and Campbell et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,862. The drawbacks to such systems, however, includes their expense and complexity. Another proposed solution to the problem is to store the relevant codes of various manufacturers in hardware so that the code would be available to the user upon request. The drawback to this arrangement was the hardware requirements due to the vast number of codes that would have to be provided. Moreover, as new products with new codes would be introduced, the older hardware might not be able to accommodate the same.
More recently, reconfigurable remote control systems have been disclosed such as may be seen in Welles U.S. Pat. No. 4,623,887, and Ehlers U.S. Pat. No. 4,626,848. In these patents, remote control systems are disclosed which, under the direction of a user, learn, store, and retransmit the remote control code of other remote control transmitters. While these systems have gone a long way towards solving the general problem of art, they still suffer from various drawbacks. First, the provided systems appear capable of capturing the information from only those remote control systems using a carrier frequency, rather than from both carrier frequency and pulse type systems. Second, because of the provided systems and methods, it is a time-consuming process for a user to capture the desired information from another remote control system. To do so, the user must press each key of the reconfigurable remote and the corresponding key of the remote to be captured at least two times. Such an inconvenient arrangement is required due the capturing system provided which must count the number of pulses in each burst and the time period of each pause between bursts.
In light of the state of the art, a simple, easily reconfigurable remote Control system is advantageous.